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- Knutsson, Johan, 1955-
(author)
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Folkliga möbler : tradition och egenart : en stilanalytisk studie av renässans- och barockdrag i den svenska folkliga möbelkonsten
- 2001
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- A collection of furniture, most of which was produced before 1770, forms the basis of this description and explanation of the characteristics distinguishing vernacular furniture from bourgeois furniture, and the vernacular furniture in one area from that in another. The vernacular material is used to test the convincing force of the art history terms created to describe the artistic expression of the upper-class culture. The criteria previously used to define the specific characteristics of vernacular furniture is called into question and modulated.The study shows how regional characteristics can be observed as early as in the seventeenth century in many areas, long before what is considered the most prosperous period of vernacular art. It shows how Renaissance features played a crucial part in influencing the inherited characteristics of vernacular furniture right up until the emergence of rococo features in vernacular painting, towards the end of the eighteenth century, and sometimes even longer.The study focuses on the selection of stylistic features as an active choice. The survival of Renaissance features at the expense of baroque features cannot only be attributed to retardataire or 'cultural fixation' as a consequence of economic stagnation and lack of outside influence. The choice of certain stylistic features over others depends on a number of reasons. The pews, pulpits and other features in the parish churches that served as models played a crucial part. Out of all of that, the village joiner would chose the models he considered best suited for domestic furniture, and disregarded the others.
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- Hedström, Per, 1963-
(author)
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Skönhet och skötsamhet : Konstnärliga utsmyckningar i svenska skolor 1870-1940
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- This thesis is about the permanent artistic decoration of Swedish school buildings during the period 1870–1940. Its main aim is to examine the ideals and values which the works installed can be said to convey. It takes its starting point in the major movement for the decoration of schools in Sweden that began around 1900, and that was part of a broader recognition of the importance of public art in the country.The thesis analyses the basic thinking behind the move to install art in schools. In Sweden, discussion on the subject was initiated by the writings and lectures of Carl G. Laurin and Ellen Key. The most important argument for the artistic decoration of schools was the general ennobling influence of art. Art represented beauty, and was thus associated with goodness and truth.The study covers some eighty permanent schemes, or individual works, in Swedish schools, created between 1877 and 1940. They are discussed, first, in a thematic section, with a focus on the different types of subject matter represented, and second, in a number of case studies. Among the subjects dealt with in the thematic analysis are characteristic themes such as sport and outdoor recreation and scenes reflecting school activities. Many of the works portray well-behaved children and young people, who are held up as good examples.The nine case studies analyse individual schemes in greater depth. They include examples that reflect the specific cultures and ideologies of, for instance, higher public grammar schools and girls’ schools. An important aspect of the case studies is their analysis of the reception of the schemes. The reviews examined include discussions of what types of subject were appropriate in art for children and young people.One conclusion drawn in the thesis is that a broader aim of the artistic decoration of schools seems to have been to mould a sense of identity. The images created depict children and young people themselves, regional landscapes and regional and national history.
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- von Lampe, Thérèse, 1949-
(author)
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Det skapande rummet
- 2004
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- King Gustav III (1746–1792) was an imaginative person who ardently dedicated himself to the creation of a national Swedish culture, formed in accordance with contemporary continental models. He was also himself a great talent in the area of art and literature. One of his major projects was the creation of an English park at Haga, in the outskirts of Stockholm. An essential component of this project was a Royal Pavilion, which served as a temporary residence for the King. This small building was in every part constructed and decorated in accordance with his wishes.The decoration was carried out by Louis Masreliez, a gifted artist who worked in the so called arabesque style and whose artistic ability lay in his solid knowledge of classical art and literature as well as his avid use of metaphores. Louis Masreliez’ wall paintings comprise diverse figures in exuberantly detailed compositions, which reproduce a veritable Olympus of gods, mixed with other motifs from Greek and Roman mythology and culture. The aim of this dissertation is to reconstruct the messages conveyed in these paintings and to, thereby, expose the general intention of King Gustav III.The nine official rooms of the King’s Pavilion are examined and two modes of interpretation are applied. The first, called ”exoteric”, concerns itself with meanings which are directed outwards, i.e. with evident political and cultural messages. The ensuing examination, called ”esoteric”, is motivated by the interest in mysticism shown by Gustav III and his circle. Earlier research has ascertained that the King was drawn to freemasonry, alchemy and even spiritism. In the Pavilion, overt and traditional explanations are found to cohere with esoterical meaning, i.e. with messages intended for an enlightened and initiated minority in high society.The method applied is a way of approaching the decorations with the view of the cultivated observer of the eighteenth century. The starting point lies in the conditions taken for granted: the way of living, thinking and feeling. Primarily, however, the associations are drawn from references which were of current interest in the days of Gustav III. A few books in the library of the Royal Pavilion are of considerable value for this theses, but the most significant literature is to be found in the private library of Louis Masreliez. His collection counted as the most prominent of its kind in Sweden and was, with regard to its content, representative of the learned humanist. Especially one category of books helps to clarify the meaning of the compositions in the Pavilion, namely the one containing engravings of antique artefacts with an adjacent text explaining each motif. The one book most valuable is L’Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures (1719) by Bernard de Montfaucon. This survey of Greek and Roman remains has hitherto been unnoticed as having been useful to Swedish interior decorators of the eighteenth century.
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- Iliescu, Mircea, 1943-
(author)
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Exonarthex : form och funktion i ortodox kyrkobyggnadskonst
- 2001
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- An orthodox church is, in general, divided into three rooms, counting from the east: the bema, the naos and the narthex. The bema, or sanctuary, is the holiest room, while the narthex is the least sacred of all. However, there are churches that have a further architectural volume in front of the narthex. Varying in structure and shape, from an open portico to a closed room, this fourth architectural unit, more or less integrated in the church building, is usually called the exonarthex. It is clear from the rich literature on orthodox church architecture that the term exonarthex is used as a denomination for all the kinds of building units that are situated in front of the narthex.The present thesis aims firstly to define these "additional" building units and then to demonstrate the ways in which they have spread both over time and geographically. The different types of these architectural structures are discussed; in certain cases they were built at the same time as the church, while in others they were added later. The research analyses a period of eight hundred years, from the 9th century to the end of the 16th. Geographically it encompasses the region known today as the Balkans, but some of the comparative analyses refer also to Russian and Caucasian architecture.Until now, the term exonarthex has been used in a general and rather imprecise way. The second major question addressed by this thesis is to answer whether this term is meaningful. And if it is, what does it mean? The aim is to find out if it is possible to identify similar architectural features and functional characteristics for a whole group of monuments, not only for the palaiologan churches of Constantinople and Thessaloniki, but also for a large number of buildings from later periods and from other orthodox regions.In order to reach a correct definition of the exonarthex we must therefore consider the relationship existing between the room itself and the inner or outer parts of the church in terms of a balance between the theological and the practical. The more the room opens towards the outside world the less its religious importance becomes, although the latter does not disappear completely. The majority of exonarthexes are sizeable architectural volumes which open through large windows or arcades. Light, which plays a central role in the theological doctrine of the time - the hesychasm - appears to have been used as a means of architectural expression, to concretize and even emphasize, in a pleasing way, the strong link between the sanctified inner space of the church and the secular world around. The daylight flowing into the exonarthex transforms this first room of the church into a kind of intermediate zone in front of the half-lightened narthex.During the palaiologan renaissance, theologians appear to have used architecture to emphasize that the individual now has freer access to the House of God, and, perhaps more important, that the Divine and Man should leave the church together, because "Man's task is to sanctify the world, not to get away from it" (Zernov). The more humane content of religion offered new impulses to church building and gave master-builders additional opportunities to further develop the architectural heritage of antiquity in accordance with the new direction of the religious message - from the interior of the church to the world surrounding it.
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- Tillberg, Margareta, 1960-
(author)
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Coloured Universe and the Russian Avant-Garde : Matiushin on Colour Vision in Stalin's Russia, 1932
- 2003
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Colour vision was of fundamental importance in modernist art. One reason its significance has been studied so little with regard to Russian art is that Soviet archives were inaccessible until the early 1990s. This work is the first close study on a so-called laboratory in an art- and science institute in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. It is based on extensive research in twenty different Russian archives, each including numerous archival funds, in addition to the Stedelijk Museum Prentenkabinet in Amsterdam and other unpublished material.Contemporary ideas from German Bauhaus and De Stijl in Holland have received deserved attention. In the Soviet Union, avant-garde artists were silenced as enemies of the people – their priorities were other than the class struggle.The implicit narrative of the book, is about a group of intellectuals who struggled to work with what they believed in, e.g. an expansion and change of innate possibilities to create something never seen before, despite political oppression.The aim of this study is to present and analyse the hitherto unknown colour theory of Mikhail Matiushin (1866–1934) published in Leningrad and Moscow in 1932.The work is divided into five parts. The first part, Colour, deals with the contexts of history, colour and art. During the 1920s a number of institutes for interdisciplinary scientific research in art, design and architecture were founded in the Soviet Union. One of them was the Institute of Artistic Culture in Leningrad – GINKhUK – where Malevich and Tatlin also worked. One goal was to formulate a universal language with mathematics as the ideal science, to be collected into an encyclopaedia for visual culture (art, architecture, design); another goal was to redesign the world for the masses outside the ‘dead’ museums, and to produce a new kind of human being, a third goal. There the artist, musician and theoretician Mikhail Matiushin supervised the Department of Organic Culture with his Laboratory of Colour.The second part, Vision, analyses Matiushin's training programme, a variant of synaesthetical union of the senses, which includes an extension of the visual angle to a complete 360°; i.e., the consciously amplified eye, defined in Matiushin’s peculiar way.The third part, Culture, compares Matiushin with the theosophist mystics Pëtr Uspenskii and C. H. Hinton, the painter Wassily Kandinsky and the philosopher Henri Bergson.Part four, Ideology, sheds light on colour from those whose perspective was based on the State philosophy of dialectical materialism. By the early 1930s, the innovative institutes were closed down due to centralization of all expressions of culture under the banner of Socialist Realism.The last part, Synthesis, provides a detailed discussion on what happened after the 1930s. It concludes with the colour theory text, both its Russian original and for the first time in English translation.The belief is that Matiushin’s colour theory was not given any consideration after its publication in 1932. The results of this study show, however, that his colour handbook has been and still is used in the colour design of St. Petersburg.
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